Religion and Solitude

This chapter examines the contested place of religious solitude in eighteenth-century Europe, tracing its redefinition from sacred withdrawal to socially bounded retreat. Drawing on theological, philosophical, medical, and literary sources, it explores solitude as a site of spiritual renewal, fanaticism, or moral peril. Case studies range from Catholic monasticism, Jansenist asceticism, and Protestant celibacy debates to Enlightenment critiques by Diderot, Voltaire, and Encyclopédie authors. Figures such as Shaftesbury, Wesley, and Bernard and Picart’s Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses illustrate attempts to reconcile retreat with sociability, while landscape hermitages and grottoes reflect the secularisation of sacred space. The analysis situates solitude within broader Enlightenment concerns—population policy, the naturalisation of religion, and the medicalisation of melancholy—showing how critiques of enforced celibacy and permanent seclusion fostered new models of temporary, voluntary withdrawal. By century’s end, solitude emerged as a morally autonomous practice, compatible with sociable life and oriented toward personal and communal renewal.